“To live is to grow, and growing comes through accepting all life forms as your teachers. Become Wolf, and take up the sense of adventure. You may just stop howling and learn to become the moon.”

~ Wolf Medicine card

Yesterday was day four of our five day juice cleanse. We’ve shaken the dust, cleared out old baggage, the angst and fear have been opened up and we got in touch with our wildness. After chatting on Skype and hanging out on G+, we both agreed that after the calm, things got a little loopy…

Day Four for Kate went like this:

Unlimited juice? This party is going to be off the hook!

No, it was actually quite sedate. Woke up. Primary series at home. Played around with my handstand practice. Juiced. Edited. Edited some more. Made a bunch of calls. More juice. Painted my toenails. Played with my kids. Wrote. Wrote some more.

The thing that I noticed the most was that internal hum—the wildness, coupled with stillness.

When I take care of myself, I tame myself. I tame my scattered mind and all my citta vrtti. When I began to study and practice massage, I noticed that during the practice of massage, my mind was the quietest it ever got. It stilled me, this caring for another human being, this huge honor. And yet, I also noticed that sometimes what was going on internally for my clients would affect me as well. Touching sadness in another person saddened me. Holding a person where they held anxiety left me hyped up, almost high.

I met briefly with a Inka shaman, and talked with him about this phenomenon. How could I do this thing that I was meant to do without taking on everyone else’s baggage? He gave me several tools that were helpful, but one in particular has been on my mind this week:

“Know when to be the wolf, and know when to be the moon.”

There are times when we are that thing; we are our wildness personified. We are fierce freedom. But there are other times where we are stillness. We are the other half of that equation. We are cool, reflected light and a guiding force. We are the moon.

Having come through this week, looking introspectively at all I have ripped loose in my life, looking at freedom, I can then find stillness. I can become the moon.

***

Day Four for Bryonie went like this:

I dreamt about hummingbirds and the beach, and when I opened my eyes, I felt convinced that I would be surrounded by one of the two.

The hummingbirds and the beach stayed with me for a good part of the day; walked my dog, got my feet wet in the lake and dropped off the five bags of stuff that I cleared out of my home to the Salvation Army.

And then what? I created this space for expansion and for dreams to run wild…and I still didn’t find time to write it all down.

My clearing had another level to it—the connecting and relating and truth-sharing with my family; I sat and wrote a purge-letter to my mother which cracked my heart right open.

By evening fall, submerged in another Epsom salts bath, the tears started.

After days of digging and digging, of clearing, of deciding what would stay and what would go, of juicing and sharing with the world the ups and downs, I got to the heart of me.

Tears of relief, tears of frustration of the truths that I found there, the grief that had hidden much deeper within my tissues then I could ever imagine.

My heart, open and vulnerable and everything.

This process of becoming the moon is magical and heartbreaking, all at the same time.

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Ed: Kate Bartolotta & Bryonie Wise